It think it's useful for high-level regular contributors to take some risks in voting in order to clear difficult entries. I tend to do less than I probably should in this regard, and would likely do even less if the boundary were raised to 99%. (Accuracy alone is not a perfect measure what a person contributes.) In short, a difficult question for me. I do recognize the problem.

One real problem here is that what gets verified is not necessarily what is correct, but what the majority opinion is. That is not necessarily the same thing. (If the majority opinion were always correct, there would not be so many countries where the democratically elected government is an absolute horror.) You can also incur three outvotes on a single three-way split if two VP5s disagree with you, right or wrong. (Happened to me during the floods in January last year, when I was out of contact for about a week. Re-open? In your dreams.)
The greater problem with dict, however, is the injustice and lack of logic in having sometimes the same penalty for getting wrong a trivial piece of dict formatting as for entering absolute rubbish.
Such a change might or might not procure greater accuracy, but it would certainly mean that there would be a fewer votes and voters. A lot fewer. I have already quit on DE-EN. (Except for Forum.)

Someone who doesn't agree with the majority gets outvoted. That doesn't mean they were wrong or inaccurate. The only ways for high point voters to keep their status would then be to either NEVER disagree with the majority, to withdraw their vote as soon as they sense they might get outvoted or to enter any disagreement by way of comment, rather than a vote. Since there seems to be a culture of ignoring comments based on the argument that "the person entering it obviously doesn't mean it or they would have voted" one can just as well not make the effort. While 99% is a nice impressive number it is meaningless unless it really represents an improvement in the actual result. Many political systems and the occasional lemming population have proven that unanimous decisions can be fatally wrong.
Edit: Hadn't seen Catesse's post before I wrote mine.

This would help ensure quality and serious contributors
~2000 votes 99% accuracy
~100 vocabulary entries that are designated "unchanged."
~Only VP5's may vote on the plant and animal entries that come from Wikipedia.
~If you make more than 3 votes in a minute, you receive an automatic warning from the system. 3 warnings and your account is temporarily blocked.

It makes absolutely no sense that people who work hard on the vocabulary entries every day are in the same category as VP5's who blind vote, vote without offering evidence, or simply use self-translations for most of their entries. And these people often go on to cause a lot of trouble for dict.cc and some eventually get banned. We could avoid the trouble in the first place if we set a higher bar. At the moment, anyone can attain VP5 status by bulk voting on plant and animal entries - and they do.

Also it would be good that outvotes that are based on an actual disagreement on the meaning would count against you more, than and outvote due to a typo, capital letter or a missing bracket.

Lisa, You said: "Since there seems to be a culture of ignoring comments based on the argument that "the person entering it obviously doesn't mean it or they would have voted" one can just as well not make the effort." This couldn't be farther from the truth. This mostly happens when someone is either trying to attain VP5 status, make-up for outvotes or in a few rare cases they just seem to like getting final confirmation. Most contributors take the debate seriously, but I know of one person who votes without thinking/evidence causing re-opens. I have no idea what his/her motives are. Just that the person is a major pain, since people put a lot of time into the debate and this person ignores it all.

I know you guys focus mainly on DE/EN but dont forget other pairs. All I said was referring to the pairs but DE/EN. Please remember that the (blind) bulk voting on DE/EN is nothing in comparison to bulk voting in other pairs. We have 1-2 year old entries there! (mostly for a good reason) Now figure the harm that is done by blindvoting through 500 such entries in comparism to some wiki copy/paste-entries, considering they are 90%+ correct which you cant exspect from random entries in other pairs.
This is one of the mainreasons I turned entirely to new language pairs. Preventing those users from doing harm now, saves us many times the work later.

Maybe there could be an extra incentive for those who contribute to the new languages, which may help some of the stick-in-the-muds on EN-DE to seek new horizons. Like Catesse, I hardly appear on EN-DE now, only popping in now and again to add an inflection or two, or the odd entry.

I fully agree with Badger, Catesse, Lisa and ddr that raising the VP5 bar to 99% is not going to solve the problem, but will probably prove counterproductive, since it will cause careful voters to be even more cautious about venturing a vote on a controversial entry, and will hardly deter unscupulous voters from finding ways to beat the system to gain or maintain VP5 status. As several contributors have noted above, it is all to easy to get an outvote for trivial reasons or on an entry that is objectively wrong but de facto verified by voters who may not have sufficient semantic competence to judge the issue or who fail to attend to the discussion history.

More useful would be more specific measures like:
- automatic identification of voters who cast unrealistic numbers of votes on a single day or within a minute
or two (zou's proposal);
- courageous denunciation of unserious voters to Paul, who can then decide whether to warn or penalize
them;
- restriction of voting rights on particular types of entries like animal and plant names to qualified voters.
Rather than blindly raising the VP5 bar, I think we would do better to concentrate on more concrete measures of this sort.

All the things mentioned here will eventually need a active admin presence of some sort. Keeping the system as it is and reporting users to paul wont work out. I cant imagine 1 person working on the future projects of dict.cc, systemchanges and at the same time being fully aware of the community, mails & co.

1. I can increase the accuracy level needed for VP5, but please bear in mind that this will increase the stress level regarding possible outvotes for everyone. I can try, but in the end I don't think you really want this.

2. Treating different languages or entries in different categories differently will lead to less understanding of the rules and regulations. Take the outvote rules for example. Over the years I added some details and exceptions based on requests from within the community and now we have a situation where people are unsure of the rules, which leads to an uneasy feeling. Of course I can write down the rules somewhere, but if they are too complex to remember, people will always be uncomfortable with them.

3. The amount of votes cast within a short period of time is limited. If people vote very fast, the system will display a message on their screen, send an e-mail to me and stop accepting more votes for some time. With the current settings this limit is already being hit occasionally even by reliable contributors. If I would make it more restrictive, more reliable contributors would have the feeling of being falsely accused.

Ich sage: The situation is frustrating for 'serious' contributors and may cause them to give up.
The mess that some 'temporary' users create and leave behind is felt for quite some time.
I resent that some people can create an account, create and/or vote on a number of entries and then leave their mess behind for long-term contributors to clean up.

Konkreter Vorschlag: In such cases, whether they choose to close their account of their own volition or not or just stop contributing just as suddenly as they came onto the scene, all of the entries that they created and all of the votes they cast should be deleted.

Just because a user is giving up doesn't mean their entries are useless or disruptive. They may just have gotten frustrated by outvotes and tossed in the towel.
I have noted that it's mostly native English speakers complaints about the voting system regarding unjustified outvotes or unsettled disputes during the discussion phase. Just like Catesse I can only stomach so much and it is irksome if one gets outvoted on entries that are justified because "it would not be grammatically incorrect for a native speaker to say that" - no matter that no one does, or "it's in a dictionary". Equally frustrating are entries where the German side one voted for had a dot, hyphen or whatever missing or an explanation in brackets was changed. I was rather enthusiastic in the beginning and told may colleagues about dict and encouraged them to contribute. To a T they have told me in so many words that they don't find it entertaining to get told they don't know what they're talking about. While they were on though they probably contributed some useful translations from their work experience.
I've often run into comments here in the forum bemoaning the fact that the pool of non-German speakers is small (and dwindling). I'd say, "Well duh."
I don't know a solution, particularly not one that would cause major system upheaval and lots and lots of work for Paul. So all I can suggest for now is not making things worse than they are.
I like ddr's idea of providing outside sources, but fear there are vocabulary areas where that will prove difficult.

Dict.cc is no different than a university class where even cheaters and people who don't do their homework get a good note / grade. While the VP5 status gives power, it gives no indication of the skill, work effort or contributions of the member. At this point a VP5 is meaningless and it's an insult to all those who have truly earned it when anyone can achieve it. It doesn't tell you if the person is a serious, thoughtful contributor who can provide evidence to back up their votes or entries, or if they are someone whose gamed the system, or someone who always votes without ever giving evidence for a vote on a controversial entry / re-open.
If dict.cc does not ensure quality in face of it's growing popularity, its reputation will suffer. It will also be responsible for the proliferation of some of the atrocious translations on the net. Every approved dict.cc translation soon gets copied by the growing number of translation dictionaries that appear online each month.

Talking about your personal experience and frustration with the voting section is one thing, making baseless assumptions as to what goes on there is another. You simply haven't spent enough time on the voting side of things to be a good judge of what is or is not going on there.

AngloAndy was focusing on a recent person who voted on absolutely anything to get his name on the front page so as to advertise his scuba gear shop. Cleaning up the entries that he managed to get to 5 votes was a mess.
As for who or who isn't complaining about outvotes, you wouldn't know. Most of the complaints do not occur on this forum. Complaints also take the form of re-opening any entry where the person has been outvoted.

Antwort:

"responsible for the proliferation of some of the atrocious translation"

That´s exactly what I am always talking about. I cant see this awareness of what we are doing anymore and the responsibility that comes with it. When I came to the dict.cc-community it was full of users striving for more accuracy. Even I had to learn my lessons when it came to sources (Hi AngloAndy) and other things. By now I´m myself such a qualitywhore and it´s absolutly necessary for dict.cc.
This VP-discussion should go in a direction to preserve this quality, attitude and even it´s older experienced users. dict.cc is outstanding to date, but with the current developement I cant see this position to be permanent.

Somehow, I did not get notification about postings on this thread, so when I came back to check there were dozens of posts and I may have missed points while scanning them.
However, I have not noticed any comment on zou's suggestion of downgrading (or not upgrading) VP unless there were 100+ unchanged inputs. (I am putting it rather loosely.) What might here not be realised is that if you make an entry, and then decide 30 seconds later that it would be desirable to enter a Subject classification (to your own entry) this will end up in having the entry tagged for eternity as "changed".
A lot of things that are regulated on dict have unforeseen and undesirable consequences. For example: transitive verbs.
1.GL 8 on verbs says: "There is no further formal classification of verbs on dict.cc.
However, transitive and reflexive verbs can be entered together with an abbreviated object like "sth.", "jdm.", "qn.", "jdn./etw.", "etw. [Akk.]", "oneself", "sich" or an example object. Verbs that can be both transitive and intransitive may include the placeholder in parentheses, as in "compter (qc.)"."
2. GL1 says: "Don't change a correct translation only because you know a better one. Post the better one as a new entry instead."
Situation: Input is made of a transitive verb without an object. This is allowable under GL 8, so under GL 1 a voter is justified in voting for it and does so. Along come voters 2 and 3, who know that the verb could (and should) have an object, so they add it. Voter 1 gets an unjustifed outvote and is in an impossible position, as the verified entry cannot reasonably be re-opened, because it is also correct as verified.
The person who made the input will have the entry listed as "Changed", whether (s)he endorses the change or not.
Also causing outvotes are the verbs where there is a change caused by adding brackets ( ) around the object. There are other similar anomalies, but I shall not go into the whole range. A lot of them have to do with the use of these brackets.
Sorry. Cassandra is in the business of pointing out problems, not of solving them.

I hope that we are not losing sight of the ultimate aim, which is to improve (or maintain) the quality of dict. It is not to punish others for disagreeing about the methods of doing this. It is not to make working on dict more difficult and unpleasant. It is not even to prevent people from making a lot of easy votes, if these are correct or at least reasonable. The VP value is not allotted for the purpose of gratifying the ego of voters, although it is pleasant to see one's work recognised; it is to facilitate the functioning of the verification process in terms of efficiency in both speed and quality.
Rather than changing the qualifications for VP value, could this be done on an individual basis? Meaning that the activities of people who are obviously abusing the voting process, whether they be long-established contributors or greenhorns, should be reported to Paul promptly and warned, have their voting power restricted individually, or banned. This has been done on occasion. I do not mean that people who simply vote quickly should be penalised, but that those who vote both quickly and fairly often wrongly should be controlled. Paul cannot monitor every entry on every site, so it is up to the contributors who notice aberrations to notify him.
Unfortunately, because most entries are more or less correct, a monkey with its finger glued to the mouse and trained to move pointer to the "Submit" box and click on it will be correct more often than not.
But can rogue voters, or those who are simply by over-enthusiastic but misguided, be restrained without resorting to drastic measures that have the potential to cause more harm than benefit? After all, nobody is in this contributing-voting business for the money. :-)

Thank you for your obviously well-thought out plan. While I haven't had the time to give the plan careful consideration, I am concerned about any system that would give someone a voting power of more than 5 points because of the potential for even worse abuse. "Damit könnte ein jetziger 5-er zu einem 3-er-Voter abgestuft oder zu einem 7-er aufgestuft werden (und alles dazwischen)." A VP3-4 can easily confirm a trusted VP6-7s votes and increase his/her voting power and accuracy.

Talk about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Technically a well-thought-out plan, but psychologically decidedly iffy. Sledgehammer to crack a nut. The original problem was really that of a few rogue voters. It does not need such a broad plan that would include everybody.
Just imagine it. Give me a gold star. If you give me one, I'll give you one. Hand on heart.
To toss another hat in the ring: would it makes things more efficient to break the rigid procedural nexus between DE-EN and the other sites? I think that giving VP6+ to anybody on DE-EN would be totally unnecessary, but it would certainly help if one or two voters on other sites had a VP6 to clear up votes with a score of 9 and little hope of making any progress.

1) The proposed Bewertung is unlikely to stop those responsible for atrocious translations into English.

2) Diese Art Bewertung makes me think of elementary school and of a report card.

I am not spending time on dict.cc for a Bewertung that may or may not be favourable.

All that I am trying to do here is try to make sure that entries and audios have acceptable English.

A number of entries unfortunately have deficient English: comparativley speaking, there are fewer, far fewer, English-speaking contributors.

In the same way that my knowledge of German will never equal that of a native speaker of German, the English of a native speaker German is unlikely to ever equal that of a native speaker of English living in an English-speaking country. This dictionary needs more English-speaking contributors.

Whatever you do, do not do anything that might have as a result to chase any speaker of English away.
I am saying that for the credibility of dict.cc.

There are some justifiable doubts about the effects of the Top Contributors (weekly) lists on DE-EN; it may certainly be leading to valuing quantity over quality. However, back to the other sites. (Yes, me again.) It is a useful tool for identifying quickly when somebody is no longer contributing, or has suddenly started contributing massively, or when a newcomer has arrived and needs to be monitored. Either by giving some gentle advice, or by repulsing a vandal. There are other ways of checking on this, but the list makes it quick and easy.

Why the claws?
I was referring to Andy's idea to delete entries made by temporary users. I merely pointed out that "temporary" is not a sufficient quality for judging a user's quality of contribution. It's tossing out the baby with the bath water. We'd limit entries to the existing contributor pool plus whoever is willing and able to make it through and stick around to become a regular. At what point do we declare a user as "temporary"? We might try to give some qualifier to temporary users and only delete entries by the "bad" ones. What would that then be?
I don't think a 99% accuracy nor the threat of having their entries deleted is going to cure the robot-voting trolls. They have analyzed the existing system and managed to devise a strategy to get to VP5. They're getting a kick out of that. So, they'll devise a strategy to get/keep VP5 at 99% accuracy. As long as it's a pure numbers game they're likely to beat it, since they don't care about the entries.

I'm not sure what you were referring to with "making baseless assumptions." I have explained why I'm no longer spending a lot of time in the contribute section. And quite frankly your post personally addressed to me is not doing anything to convince me otherwise. We're using a numbers system to judge language quality. I've come to accept that unless I'm willing to forgo my own idea of quality in the interest of getting to the coveted VP5 status I just don't have the time, schedule and working style to get there. Unfortunately that does also seem to mean that my opinion is more easily brushed aside and I'm open to attack.

If you'd like an example of why I think VP5 isn't the gold standard look at the link at Andy 21:04 Unfortunately that's very far from the only case.
At the same post you can find one of the "comments here in the forum bemoaning the fact that the pool of non-German speakers is small" I was referring to.
Apparently there are still people in the contribute section who value help clearing up messed up entries. No matter the VP.
If you don't value someone's opinion, then please, just skip reading the post. Dragging someone out for a verbal flogging is neither going to solve the original problem, nor make me improve my views of the contribute section. I can sort of understand that the bot-voting has created a high level of frustration, but I'm not the enemy here.

Kiskunfelegyhaza's idea of removing the top contributor list sounds as though it would get rid of an incentive for both the advertizers as well as those getting an adrenalin rush from being top rated (no matter how they got there.) I'm not sure what the trade-off would be. Catesse's post hints at it not being a free ride.

My idea would be to dampen down the number game and clarify what people are actually voting for. As I said in the title it isn't necessarily doable and it would certainly have drawbacks.
I'd propose a change from the current "one vote on the entire entry" system to opening a form for each entry where the voter would check/ vote for:
- English expression correct and used as is | yes, no, don't know
- German expression correct and used as is | yes, no, don't know
- translations are a good match EN>DE | yes, no, don't know
- translations are a good match DE>EN | yes, no, don't know
- entry is sufficiently disambiguated and tagged to clarify usage | yes, no, don't know
- grammar tags EN correct
- grammar tags DE correct
- substantiating source [ }
Advantage: It would enable voters to supply a partial vote on portions of an entry and not vote on parts they feel comfortable judging and not on parts they feel less sure about. It leads to more precise votes because it focuses attention on separate issues. It makes bot-voting more complicated, though not impossible. One could statistically weed out voters who consistently vote all yes and have a closer look at them. If that in itself isn't enough to cure the problem one could implement ddr's "required sources" idea later on. The VP list could be split by category. The grammar king could be crowned alongside the EN expert, the DE specialist, the matchmaker and the all-round winner. It would give newcomers an incentive to get started and slowly introduce them to the system without the hazing phase. On the beta sites it would be possible to vote entries in via an aggregate vote by several voters in different categories, rather than waiting for the all-rounder pool to get beefed up.
Disadvantage: Easy entries take a lot longer for experienced voters to verify. Paul would have to make major changes to the system. (Which I do consider the issue that'll sink the idea.) It might take longer till enough votes in all categories have been accumulated. Splitting the VP listing by category might require the existing VP5ers to start over building up their record.

But never mind. I probably don't spend enough time in the contribute section to have any good ideas anyway.

Antwort:

kisku: as far as I remember, it was only one contributor trying to get on the list to advertize.

What, please, is "bot-voting"? I seem to have missed something.
Maybe the time has come on DE-EN to introduce something as complicated as the suggested break-down of categories in the verification. It would probably slow down the automatic voters, but they could still click "yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes" instead of just "yes", and it could also lose quite good contributors who would just give up. In addition, it would bring most of the other sites to a crashing halt. Maybe there could be some sort of condition: that type of voting to be introduced once the 200,000 entries mark - or some other point - has been reached. In addition, while the scarcity of native speakers of English is being lamented, courses of action are being taken, or suggested, that have the effect of driving us away. Lisa and I are far from being the only ones who have given up, but who have just quietly faded away instead of making a fuss.

What's needed most is a system that values diligence and politeness, otherwise it will always appear to be unfair. Currently I only have the amount of votes and outvotes to measure the voting quality. From your feedback I understand that the current system does not reflect the real efforts well enough. There are three options for me:
1. Leave the system as it is,
2. find a way to measure diligence and politeness (like in my suggestion above), or
3. change the system to give everyone equal voting rights, careless or not, because I can't determine the real voting quality.

I'd ask you to focus your suggestions on how to make the calculation of the voting power fairer.

Both diligence and politeness are very relative criteria.
Politeness on the whole doesn't seem a problem at all to me. On E-D at least most contributors are polite and considerate anyway. But there are national and even regional differences in what is considered polite.
And somebody doing a full time job can't be as diligent as for instance an old age pensioner. Also, some people who have invested a hell of a lot of work in dict.cc, for whatever reason do far less now. Are they to be punished by bad diligence marks and in the end by reduced VPs?
IMHO the only 'diligence' relevant for the quality of dict.cc is the diligence invested in a single entry or vote. If somebody works on 10 entries a week or 10 a month or 10 a year should make no difference.

To my mind people get VP5 far too quickly nowadays (before they have gathered enough experience) and I suppose this is the result of far too soft rules for outvotes. If a tightening of the outvote rules alone doesn't help, we could try a duty to offer sources for votes. (Even if they are the same sources as those offered in the original entry, it would take some time to copy them, wouldn't it?) Another or additional possibility would be a lower limit to how many votes you can do in a given time.

Antwort:

Take Away the VP5 status of those who got it dubiously instead of overhauling the whole system.

4;Paul: There is a simple solution to the problem of people attaining VP5 status who shouldn't. Listen to the complaints of your regular users and put the offenders back to VP2 rather than giving them chance after chance. Yes dict.cc has a number of other issues, but they don't all need to be solved now.

The problem with the "politeness" rating is that it could be used against people who find legitimate fault with an entry - not to mention simple animosity between two contributors.
If person A consistently enters poorly sourced entries and person B frequently points that out, person A will more than likely give person B a negative approval rating. No matter how polite you are, people do not like having their entries or votes challenged and they will resent you. Quality will be stifled, if we are scared to point out the faults or weaknesses in people's entries, votes, comments.
Also, what is to stop someone from giving person B a low rating on quality? Nothing. Person B could provide legitimate sources of the language pair, use of the word in both languages, etc., etc., and Person A could still say person B's research was poor because it disagreed or challenged their take.

None of Paul's proposals would encourage me to return to regular contribution to the DE-EN site, on the contrary. Having lived for several years with the old Bewertungssystem, I would be vehemently opposed to adopting a new one. It worked horribly then, and I predict that it would work horribly now. Paul, you should take more seriously the complaints here concerning the "Top Contributors" list. Catesse, if you go to the "home" link on a given site, or if you click on "contribute" and then click to make the list follow the order of the most recently made entries, you will quickly uncover new contributors and see what they are contributing. You can see what entries were recently verified and proposed. The Top Contributors list is not needed to figure these things out. But the Top Contributors list does absolutely zero to reward quality on dict.cc. Getting rid of this feature is, in my view, the first step that should be tried to address the problem identified in this thread. I haven't seen any other suggestion here that would improve dict.cc rather than making it worse, based on my own experience.

The top-contributor list motivates people - for whatever reason - to verify entries. The success of dict.cc is greatly enhanced by having hundreds of thousands verified entries. The List is accomplishing that. For example: the audio translations often had several hundred unverified audios until the Top Contributors List was established.
It doesn't take a rocket-scientist to figure out that the Top Contributors List can easily contribute to poor entries being verified. But this complaint seems to be brushed aside or rationalized. The Top Contributors List is good business. Sadly, I don't see it going away.
2011-03-22 "Um einen zusätzlichen Anreiz zu bieten, sich am Wortschatzaufbau zu beteiligen, werden jetzt die Top-Beitragenden direkt auf den Startseiten der verschiedenen Sprachpaare angezeigt und verlinkt."

bot = robotic = automatic It's used when someone writes a software program to automatically do sth. like add a tag, send an email or, in this case, vote. May not necessarily be a software program, but a person acting like one.
"In addition, it would bring most of the other sites to a crashing halt." That would remain to be seen. It stands to reason that there are many more people out there who'd feel confident judging on part of the list, for instance whether a translation is a good match, but would not feel confident knowing whether their non-native language entry needs some grammar tag, a comma or some other tiddly bit. Someone else might not be too sure whether an entry actually is a good match, but is a grammar wiz in their own language and can clean that side up in a buzz. With the current system they either both get over their doubts and vote for things they wouldn't or even shouldn't feel comfortable to. The other options open to them is to engage in a discussion at the entry without voting or pair up with one or several other voters and clear the entry via a separate email exchange. I may be wrong, but looking at some of the other language sites, what is keeping things from moving there is a lack of generalist know-it all voters. I may well be wrong, but I think there are people out there who can judge a good translation when they see it, and would even be willing to invest the time to dig up sources in case the ones supplied aren't conclusive. But we'd also ask them are/become experts in the ins and outs of tags, word class, and gender tags. I'd wager though that we have or could find people who know / could learn how to do that well enough to do that in their respective native language. With the current system they have to check both the tagging and the translation itself. In a split system they could just clean up the tags on whatever side they feel comfortable with. I see a real possibility for actually getting things verified faster and with more confidence than by relying on finding and keeping a sufficient pool of generalist voters.
If we allow experienced translators to vote on matching translations without being bogged down with mechanics of what brackets to use or where to put a gender tag they'll have a positive experience.
A native German speaker could theoretically go through all the sites clearing up brackets and tags on their site thus pitching in with what the previous person wouldn't or couldn't resolve. Same for a native speaker of one of the other dict languages. They'd both get points and positive feedback for their contribution. Gerald Ford would think this should be fast and effective. The "fulfillment in work" movement would call it boring and is doomed to failure. I don't think there's any way to know but to try.
That would mean a lot of work for Paul, though. Wasted effort if it turns out to be a failure and we have to revert to the existing system. And that's the point where I see it fail.

"Someone else might not be too sure whether an entry actually is a good match, but is a grammar wiz in their own language and can clean that side up in a buzz."We already have people who do that.

"With the current system they either both get over their doubts and vote for things they wouldn't or even shouldn't feel comfortable to."You've provided no evidence to support this assumption.

"but I think there are people out there who can judge a good translation when they see it, and would even be willing to invest the time to dig up sources in case the ones supplied aren't conclusive." We already have people who do that.

"But we'd also ask them are/become experts in the ins and outs of tags, word class, and gender tags. I'd wager though that we have or could find people who know / could learn how to do that well enough to do that in their respective native language." We already have people who do that in both languages.

"With the current system they have to check both the tagging and the translation itself.This is not a hardship.

My comments at 21:35 were in response to Catesse's post stating "...a break-down of categories in the verification ... would bring most of the other sites to a crashing halt." They should be read in that context. I'm trying to point out that there are alternative scenarios to the proposed + Someone else might not be too sure whether an entry actually is a good match, but is a grammar wiz in their own language and can clean that side up in a buzz+." | We already have people who do that. >
Yes, but now their vote counts for the entire entry. Or they leave a comment and don't get any credit. If they are doing it now, are you suggesting they'd cease their efforts in with a verification form in categories?

"With the current system they either both get over their doubts and vote for things they wouldn't or even shouldn't feel comfortable to ."| You've provided no evidence to support this assumption. > Talking of two examples someone not confident whether an entry needs some grammar tag, etc and someone else not too sure whether an entry actually is a good match. What got lost from that -either - sentence was the -or- part ...or just leave a comment and not get credit.[Sorry for the omission] If you know of another option within the current system it's not obvious to me.

"but I think there are people out there who can judge a good translation when they see it, and would even be willing to invest the time to dig up sources in case the ones supplied aren't conclusive."| We already have people who do that. And those people would then no longer do that? What I'm suggesting is that the pool of voters might be expanded to include people who ONLY do that and get credit. BTW According to AngloAndy 21:04 I'm not the only one who thinks dict could stand a couple more people doing it. Also see Catesse 07:47
"But we'd also ask them are/become experts in the ins and outs of tags, word class, and gender tags. I'd wager though that we have or could find people who know / could learn how to do that well enough to do that in their respective native language." We already have people who do that in both languages. Again I didn't say we don't have people who do that. What I tried to explain is that there are people out there or in here who enjoy that part of the process. With a verification system in categories they could focus on that and get full credit for their work.

"With the current system they have to check both the tagging and the translation itself."| This is not a hardship. I wasn't talking hardship, but voting accuracy and threat of outvotes despite a potential for a valuable contribution and rewarding work for new and existing contributors.

Your post seems to argue that dict has enough contributors who are all happy as clams. I see that differently. I read comments here in the forum, hear them as reported above from people who left and I see room for improvement.
DE<>EN has 180 pages of unverified translations. Some or most of those with some moderate to serious issues. There is some chance that with a verification system in categories those issues could be highlighted. An entry with No votes on the English side but Yes for good match would need the attention of a native English speaker. Division of labor is a concept that has quite a track record for improving efficiency in industry. Somehow I think that a system that has as much backlog as dict has on most of its language sites doesn't benefit from an "I'm in. Let's close the door attitude."
The original issue was people who game the system to gain voting power and how to weed them out. The farther we move the voting system from the pure one click numbers game it is now the more difficult it will be for automatic voting to not stick out. Just voting at a certain speed isn't a sufficient qualifier. Neither is being registered only for a certain period of time. However, if you'd add consistent "Yes" votes in all categories checked, that's something that can be analyzed statistically and would enable Paul to check and possibly block such a user before too much damage is done.
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4; Paul. I have not received a notification of posts on this thread since my last post. . I do not know if the problem is at my end or yours. Of course, I checked here, but I am not going to keep doing so. I have said all I intend to say.
However, if the fault is at my end, I am wondering if there might be other notifications that have not come through. (Usually I get about 40 mostly unwanted emails in the morning; today there were none, so I suspect it is my server that is at fault.) Can't do anything about it. Sorry if I have failed to answer an email - I did not receive it.

4;zou: Changing the VP manually by one single person (me) can never be objective or fair. Also, some people complain a lot, others never do. Some people like others and some don't, based on different experiences with them. If I would venture into manually assigning VPs, I would end up discussing (and arguing with) people all day, every day. That's not a solution for me. It has to be a majority decision by several people.

Regarding your example with the politeness rating: It's not a problem if person A, with the poorly sourced entries, gives person B a negative vote - because he is the only one and one vote doesn't change the total rating. The opposite will be the case: Person A will get negative diligence votings by B, C, D, E, F and G, so this rating will count. If he gives back negative ratings to all the others, they don't harm them, because each will have only one. I can make the votes invisible until there are so many - from different people - that they count. By then it will be justified.

4;Kiskunfelegyhaza: In my opinion, what's needed most urgently is a better system for the assignment of voting rights / VP. For me, the top contributors list doesn't change anything in that regard.

4;zou: Having more contributors is better for everyone involved. If there would be a significantly higher amount of contributors, I could raise the bar for verifying entries, so the quality would increase. Also, more contributors would mean that the smaller languages wouldn't come to a standstill every now and then. This is not a matter of making money, it's a matter of making dict.cc work.

4;Lisa4dict: I have tried so many things. Lots of them failed and lots of them succeeded against all odds. You never know before you try. One can call it wasted effort, but that's life. It's a perpetual learning process.

4;Catesse: If you receive a notification e-mail for a forum thread, you have to click the link contained to get there. By clicking the link you state that you're still interested in the thread. This is to avoid floods of notification e-mails for threads one is no longer interested in.

Thanks for the advice, but I know that. Re possible loss of emails: in a moment of aberration, I put my name down for two semi-professional groups, and have for months been harassed by 40-60 emails every day, and have not been able to get out of them. Mainly from America. Now, I ask you, would I be interested in a job in New York or a conference in Santa Fe or somewhere? My fault for putting my name down in the first place. Then, suddenly, nothing. From them, or from dict. Well, one message from dict re this thread has come through OK not long ago, so maybe it is just that these groups have got the message that I immediately delete everything from them. I should be so lucky.
Sorgfalt: meticulousness? precision? Not quite the same.
Jetzt was anders betreffs VP. Ich habe es bisher sorgfältig vermieden, das Kind beim Namen zu nennen, aber jetzt ein einziges Wort ins Ohr: Razorflame. (Weißt du noch, was in diesem Fall geschehen ist? Wohl ein Sonderfall, oder?)

First, this forum format is wholly unworkable for lengthy discussions like the present one. We need to have a structured format, which is the standard one on the internet. Then, responses can be grouped under the particular note that they are referring to, in a tree structure. Why no one has complained about this before now is a mystery to me.

Second, I don't believe you can improve quality without cutting down on quantity. We have two parties here: a pro-quantity and a pro-quality one. Any suggestion gets a negative response from the opposing party. No suggestion is going to satisfy everyone.

I favor pro-quality at this time. When a dictionary is small, rapid increase is an urgent matter to come up to a competitive level. Dict.cc is now a large dictionary, so I don't see the need to sustain a high rate of increase.

Removing the top contributors list would be a good pro-quality step. It would almost certainly cut down on volume and that volume decrease would most likely come from the less-considered votes. I, for one, can personally attest to the corrosive influence that ranking members has. It appeals to ones competitive instincts and competition is not the unqualified friend of probity.

Second, I would limit all voting to just 3 or 4 subject areas per person. Every translation should have a subject tag, indicating either its specific area, like math, or "general" for items like "global change" that don't fit a single domain. Idioms and titles of books, music, etc. could also be open to voting by everyone. If you want to get serious about quality, you need to restrict voting to areas of competence. Once you have chosen your areas of competence in your profile, you can not change them without either waiting a given length of time or emailing Paul, giving good reasons for the change. There may be a few subject areas without sufficient qualified voters. As that becomes evident, steps (like opening the vote to everyone) can always be taken. But the bulk of the translations, I believe, will not fall into that situation.

Then, I would require a minimum length of time to transpire between gaining VP4 and VP5 status, say 3 months. This would reduce the motivation for "bulk voting" since it would not get you VP5 status any sooner.

And last, I would require a minimum of, say, 100 approved translations that you have initiated from your three subject matter areas before gaining VP5 status. These translations can not come from idioms or general areas, but only from specific domains like chemistry, art, and music.

All current VP5 members who do not satisfy these requirements would be demoted to VP4 status until such time as they are met.

I don't think your proposals are going to work, especially with the new languages, which need all the help they can get. I hope you are limiting your proposals to EN-DE. As for your proposed time delay for going up from VP4 to VP5, I am in absolutely no hurry on NO-DE and SV-DE to reach VP5, as I find checking translations in what are to me two foreign languages that much more difficult.
As for the Hall of Fame, there seems to be a couple of users hell-bent on reaching the top (they've got a long way to go, ha ha). Anyway I have seen myself drop a place there, but I'm not going to lose any sleep because of it. Quality comes before quantity.

I really did not want to prolong this thread, BUT! (shouting briefly) I cannot see that any of the suggestions would have a positive effect without a corresponding negative effect. (Which would be obvious to almost everybody except the person making the suggestion, so I am prepared for flak too.)
My suggestion: no alteration in general terms. A clearer way for established contributors to report abuses without feeling like the schoolyard tattle-tale. If it is noticed by - say three? - contributors that somebody is making quick, incorrect votes, and not answering emails or responding to comments, then Paul can, should and already sometimes does suspend the account until the offender responds. If the offender is not amenable to correction, then reduce voting power progresively. If VP cannot be reduced further (that is, already at 2), then close the account. This has been effective in the past.
Please, let's use the sniper approach, not carpet bombing. And if a person is making quick correct votes, then what is the problem? Sure, I have had somebody vote quickly on an entry where I have spent five or ten minutes on research. It is annoying, but that is the luck of the game.
Double-dipping in the past has been handled by closing some or all of the accounts. There are people who have access to numerous computers through their work as well as at home. They are indentifiable only by observation of their voting patterns, but Paul is unlikely to notice this unless it is drawn to his attention.
I might add that I miss Razorflame sorely. I accept that the annoyance that he was causing elsewhere was intolerable to many and had to be handled, but the EN-PL site might well have been 5,000 entries richer if he were still around, and most of them would have been acceptable, if not of top quality.
Right: I have my tin hat on and have sought cover.

Razorflame was suffering serious mental health problems. He said so himself. He admitted to use dict as a sort of therapy. I can't speak for EN-PL, but in EN-DE he created an awful mess and everybody was more than happy when his account had been closed. Except for you, it seems.
By the way, I can't see the point bringing razorflame to this thread.

In checking over the results of his votes, actually the accuracy is quite good, certainly he does not vote so poorly as to merit what has the earmarks of a personal vendetta against him. From what I have seen, he has done a number of sites quite a lot of good. He deserves to be recognized for his contributions, not punished, singled out, or intimidated. From what I read earlier in this forum, I expected to see a horrible voting record. But I don't find that, on the contrary. If casting votes quickly is a sin, then I am guilty as well. But something tells me Catesse is not too sorry to see me move her entries on the Polish-English site through based on my trust in her work (I wish someone would help move my German-Albanian votes through in the same way, they just sit there festering - maybe mial can help??). And when errors do pop up, which is rare, I adjust my votes to move the corrected version through. Result: many more verified entries than would be the case without my assistance. We must face that whatever measures are taken have to be just as valid for Finnish-English as for German-English. This will of necessity result in an imperfect system. Dict.cc is a fantastic resource, but it is the product of mass efforts, not of a few dedicated, paid professionals. I think mial should be thanked, not raked over the coals. If his work isn't perfect, it certainly isn't horrible, and given the state of a number of the dictionaries on which he works, including his native Bulgarian, he deserves some credit for his assistance in growing the number of verified entries. All of these little dictionaries will improve over time, as more participants become involved and a larger pool of expertise is applied to the job. At some point, the quality of the new dictionaries will approach that of German-English. Until then, I think we owe it to active contributors like mial to be patient and appreciative of what they are able to contribute. I vote on some of the same sites as him, and I haven't found him to be disruptive in any way, in contrast to Razorflame. I miss Dumcsizo of the Hungarian sites terribly, even though her work was not of the highest quality. She was kind and enthusiastic, and she contributed a lot of useful entries and votes. She helped grow those dictionaries at a time when there was very little interest. Then she got hounded out by this kind of Strebertum and wrong-headed pursuit of impossible perfection. What a pity. Catesse, can I join you beneath your tin hat? I may need it ... In the meantime, mial, I could really use your help with the Albanian dictionaries!!

You have misunderstood me. I am well aware of the Razorflame situation. We exchanged dozens of private emails on the topic. I doubt that anybody tried harder to keep him on track, with limited success. I have never objected to the fact that he closed his account, after considerable pressure. I am aware of the problems he caused; some of his entries, more than a year old, still cannot be settled. But nevertheless, I regret that it was necessary, because the good work that he did was, in fact, greater than the problems that arose. It simply was not noticed as much as the havoc he caused.
My very cogent purpose in raising the matter was to show that the mechanism is already there to control wayward contributors without introducing new measures that will make a lot of inoffensive and useful contributors hopping mad. I could cite other examples of the effectiveness of the powers already firmly in place. I did not want to get personal, but nobody seemed to be taking this option seriously, so I drew attention to one - and only one - of the prominent cases.

You know how much I appreciate your work on the Polish sites. I shall not go into details here - off topic. However, I checked mial's record on EN-BG, and it is becoming very good. Most of his outvotes are purely matters of format, such as failing to tag the English form as {s} when the Bulgarian is {pl}. If he is following this forum, I have a message. Don't stay where you are not welcome. Join the Slavonic sites. Just be sure to include the direct object of transitive verbs, and the aspect. I am sure that you would be welcomed with open arms; your company would be appreciated and your lapses of judgment would be forgiven. We are a small but usually congenial "band of brothers".
Perhaps not so strangely, while checking on the BG site, I found that I could understand a great deal of the Bulgarian, although I am totally unfamiliar with the language and I would have no idea whether the grammatical endings are correct. I am sure that you could manage Polish.

I dont know what I feel. It´s a bettersweet taste of surprise and disgust.

I also dont know how thoroughly you checked his votes, but if you get this opinion we might aswell reconsider the role of dict.cc. There is a site called glosbe.com, our job there is entirely done by a machine, probably just as fast a Mial´s linguistic skills.
The ONLY reason he is not on a lower VP is because of the high quality entries made by the REAL valuable contributor in those pairs. Nobody there needs Mial to verify them, because those pairs have enough voters, especially voters that actually read before submit.

Since you all come out so honestly maybe I should come straight forward too.
Mial is a blindvoter, massivly whoring points, expanding in other language pairs he got no clue of, no replying/responding in either way, not interested in any convention nor guidelines. He is a freakin bot pressing the submit button and you got HARD EVIDENCE (30k votes) for that. The damage of thousands of votes just verified, rather than checked then verified is massive. There are 1-2year old entries in some pairs (DE/ES) because nobody can verify them. Mial can do those 600 old entries in under an hour and even agrees with the horrible entries. Woohoo, lets cherish him for being so kind to come along all pairs and verify the greatest bullshit ever seen.

Mial guilty or not, your approach to recruit the person of doubt for your cause is absolutly pathetic (sorry). "Hey you dont care about guidelines, you vote like a robot in languages you dont have any idea of - please join Kiskunfelhaza / Catesse joint venture" - Is that for real or just deliberate provocation?

Do me a favor and check his voting history again. If you keep this opinion of him being a useful contributor rather than a verifybot, you lose all credibility for me. If building up and animating the new language pairs means to sell my soul and come to terms with irresponsible users like this, I dont wanna have anything to do with it anymore. The work you both do is admmirable in the new pairs and eventually leads to more contributors. Recruiting someone like him just for the sake of quantity (in w/e pair) destroys all your work within 10 lines of text. Very sad, my condolences.

No need to get your toga in a twist. I am not your doormat.
If mial is a machine, then Paul should know and do something about it. If he is a human being, then maybe something can be done about him. In general terms, I am a cynic about humanity. In individual cases, I will usually give a person the benefit of the doubt, until proven otherwise.
As for me, I am willing to quit any time that I am causing too much irritation to the general community. In fact, even happy to do so. There are a lot of other things that I could - and should - be doing. For years, Kisku and I have been struggling to keep a number of minor sites alive, with quite inadequate support. (I acknowledge that we are not the only ones.) Neither of us has Don's apparently angelic patience, and I think that Wenz has also just about had enough. DE-EN will manage quite nicely, but as for the other sites: Lose us and see what happens. This is in no way intended as a threat, but it is a distinct possibility.

Well I dont want to get in a argument unless provoked and thats the only thing I can see here. We talk about if this massive blind voting should be part of dict.cc or not and you both want to recruit him to even more language pairs. If that is not for the sale of pure provocation... You and Kiskun's intention is pretty obvious here and therefor I back off completly. May you invite even more of such users, I dont care anymore. If this behavior will be accepted and encouraged by users like you both and maybe eventually even by Paul, dict.cc took the last step to get just "another" internet dict.
Paul's idea of a ranking tool is also absolutly in vain if users like Mial will be high ranked by you. The funny part is that I probably get a nice downranking just for saying out loud how irresponsible this is :)

Heflamoke, once again you are drawing attention to the vital importance of treating others with respect. Your languages is full of mean-spirited exaggerations and base forms of usage that are inappropriate for a group of contributors whose only bond is this electronic medium. Your provocative and egocentric tone and inability to compromise drove Dumcsizo away from dict.cc completely and created in me an extreme distaste for working on the Hungarian sites I loved so much before your arrival. I will give mial one thing that sets him far apart from you, and that is that he is not casting insults about in this forum. Yes, I enjoy working with him, as he is a quiet, diligent contributor. I saw only a low level of errors in his work, nothing surely that would warrant the rant you find it necessary to indulge in. Just getting along is a large part of what dict.cc's contributors must do in order to bring the dictionary's mission forward. A "my way or the highway" attitude won't accomplish that. Different working styles - yes, a great thing, a necessary thing for a global project. Diversity within certain basic parameters is equally great. Mial's work has enriched dict.cc. Personally, I hope that continues, and that he doesn't get put off by this unfortunate exchange.

Not enough that you admire a very very bad "contributor", you also bring stoneold stories up, twist the words and then you switch in your wellknown victim role.
Congrats, you spotted once again a thread with Heflamoke and played your old grudges. I hope you realise how pathetic this witchhunt is. Not because I feel bad about it, rather because you use such serious problem for your personal vendetta.

Talking about mean-spirited, written by your hands. Irony.
Mial is maybe the least problem we have.

that communicating in a manner that conveys some semblance of respect toward others isn't exactly your strong suit. I think there is more than one way to be a "bad contributor" to dict.cc.

Concerning Parker11's proposal, I think that 98% voting accuracy is already an awfully high threshold. Raising it could have the effect of deterring people even further from tackling challenging or controversial entries. Efforts to avoid outvotes will only be increased. More people will have only VP4 status and any backlog of unverified entries will grow. It seems to me that there is a certain degree of mud-slinging going on here, with individuals ascribing many a sinister motivation to contributors supposedly desperate to attain VP5, as though that were a trophy of major significance. Perhaps I don't take matters seriously enough, if I did, I wouldn't be contributing thousands of entries with only VP2 status. Regardless, I have my doubts that an increase from a 98% to a 99% threshold for VP5 status would have the desired effect. But that's just me.